NPR's Morning Edition, Ah, good times. But I went to elementary school in the mid 80's so why do I remember filmstrips? Now that I think about it our wood and iron desks had built-in inkwells, and the duck and cover strips seemed oddly meaningless.

Curry, and I don't mean Coco Ichiban, might just be the ultimate cure-all health food. Curry is said to fight cancer, Alzheimer's, and now the Guardian reports curry leaves may help control diabetes. I'd bet a few hundred yen that, with some selective googling, I could find a good Indian curry might also cure male impotence, asthma, whooping cough, pink eye and today's lunch. Now if scientists could enlighten us about the health benefits of tandori chicken, and garlic nan I'd never feel guilty again.

Every single time a commercial for Qoo comes on Masako tugs on my sleeve and in her best voice belts out a, "Qoooo---". She loves the ads but oddly never had it before and doesn't plan on buying the drink anytime soon. You can watch the latest commercials here, and can also choose not to buy Qoo at any conbini or vending machine that sells sweetened fruit drinks that, thanks to consumer protection laws, can not be referred to, or labeled as juice.

San Francisco based photographer Todd Hido, master of natural lighting and huge favourite of mine, has a series of photos featured at featured.nu alongside a mini Q&A. Quadruple espressos? Sounds like advice from a lomographer not someone who shoots in very low light. Obviously he's got one hell of a sturdy tripod.

The other day on a crowded train I started reading How to be Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen. I can't remember how it was I came across this book, most likely from someone's recommended list during one of my frequent travels down the many Amazon tributaries.

I was afraid that the first essay about his father's battle with Alzheimer's titled My Father's Brain would set the tone for the rest of the book, because to me, a stranger to Franzen's other work, seemed way too private and personal. Then in the next essay Imperial Bedroom he takes air out of the popular belief that privacy is on the decline, or has he might put it, the illusion of privacy. The real gem so far is the essay titled Why Bother? or more commonly known as 'The Harper's Essay', his 1996 lament on the state of the novel, or maybe more specifically the social novel. I just stared reading it and have already doggy-eared a couple pages for later review. Here's a favourite quote (okay, it's more a quote of a quote),

Get outta town! Richard Branson? That conservative, camera shy, penny pincher?

We've all had days where we just want to disappear from sight, but can't honestly say I've ever considered this. A still from Sofia Hulten's video Grey Area where she dresses in a grey flannel suit and hides in the most unlikely places in an office: Gray carpets, open umbrellas, and filing cabinets.

And now for no apparent reason a photo of my powerbook with prized Girl Skateboards stenciled sticker. From the flickr mac stickers group.

In the past few weeks Frankie has started walking on her own, up to six steps before proudly falling back on her bum. During her peak playtime hours our apartment looks like it�s been hit by a smaller, albeit dryer, hurricane Frances with books and toys strewn across our 3LDK. In an effort to create more walking/falling space for her I removed the kotatsu (low Japanese table) from the living room and to help create some balance replaced it with an overflowing book case that was tucked away in our spare room.

I've built up a sizable collection of books during my half decade in Japan and it feels great to display them nicely in the living room where we spend the majority of our time. And of course the bottom shelf is reserved for the likes of Curious George, Dr. Seuss, Winnie the Pooh and other fine board and sponge books. I�m amazed how much this small case has opened up the apartment and of course created more space for all the walking, walking, falling, head-on-ledge bumping and crying.

It's 12:30 AM and do you now where your delinquent, good for nothing, motorcycle gang member son is? Making his third pass past my apartment revving his tricked out bike louder than once thought possible with a 100 of his closest friends, waking my daughter and bringing her to tears. That's where.

The Japan Photography Mailing List spontaneously combusted yesterday when out of the blue the list maintainer Juergen Specht decided on his own it was no longer worth his trouble and deleted both the list of 250 plus members and more than a years worth of archived messages from his servers with no warning. Those thousands of messages accumulating a wealth of information, reviews, advice and general photography conversation between its members. Thanks Juergen, that was real swell of you. Jerk. Read what Jim, Kristen and Kurt had to say.

The list has been tentatively restarted at Yahoo! Groups so if want to join, or for that matter re-join the conversation send a mail to japanphoto-subscribe[at]yahoogroups[dot]com

From the crew that brought us Sundown Sessions comes the Sunscreen Film Festival. An independent short-film contest for both first-time and veteran filmmakers. The submission deadline is October 22nd and the 10 finalist films will be screened Sunday November 21st in Shimokitazawa.

For all the details download the official info pack (pdf 1MB).

The Sixth Sense made an actor out of Bruce Willis and if it wasn't for that punk Haley Joel Osment would have been solid gold. I rather enjoyed Signs and Unbreakable despite the bad reviews, watching them in the theater and renting the latter a few times afterward. So it wasn't difficult deciding what to see yesterday.

In my opinion The Village is M. Night Shyamalan’s best film to date and as an added bonus no snot-nosed Haley Joel Osment. By all means read what the critics have to say but don't let that stop you from watching and judging the film on your own. Because heaven forbid you may actually enjoy a few plot twists. There's no doubt M. Night Shyamalan uses trademark gimmicks in his work like plot twists, Hitchcock like horror scenes and so forth. And to be honest there's not a whole lot to those twists in the story, but it's the suspenseful mood he creates out of basically nothing which I think makes him a great filmmaker. Long live the franchise I say. Well as long as that prissy Haley Joel says away. I hate that kid.

For those in Japan the TV series 24 premiers tonight on FOX. I don't normally watch a lot of television outside of CNN or the odd Discovery Channel program and I'd rather eat broken glass than sit through a sitcom or "reality" TV show, but I've been told 24 is quite good. We'll see.

After the last few weeks of selecting, editing, printing and framing (no blood, a few tears and plenty sweat) ten photographs are now ready for my exhibition on Sunday. If you're in the area come by and enjoy the live and dj'd tunes from 5 till 10.

Date: Sunday Sept. 19th 5pm to 10pm
Event: Sundown Session 13.0
Venue: Antena Cafe, 2-14-2 Shimokitazawa JOW Building 4F

First Joey, then Dee Dee a year later now Johnny. I haven't seen it for some time but "I Wanna Be Sedated" remains one of my top favourite music videos of all time.

I sought out a gmail account a few months ago but never bothered using it. I use a paid email service called fastmail.fm which, in large part because of the attention gmail has gained, will now be providing 2GB storage space. Mind you this is for paying users but their feature rich webmail interface, ability to send mail from multiple "personalities" and IMAP is well worth the cost.

Anyway, if you're one of the five people in the developed world that wants, but doesn't yet have a gmail account I've got five invites I'd like to give away to readers of my site. So if you leave your name and a working email address you can be the last kid on the block with gmail. Takes three clicks to put an email in the trash, they keep your deleted messages for an "indefinite period of time�, massive potential for abuse, what's not to love?

When I left the apartment this morning Masako said something about me looking like a tree. She was referring to my decision to wear brown pants with a newly purchased brownish-green shirt. Oh hell, now that I think about it I do look like a tree, and a poorly dressed one at that.

I wish I was five again and had my Mom pick my school clothes for the next day. No thought involved, just change into what ever was neatly folded at the foot of the bed every morning. I guess I lucked out in that my mother was not colour blind like so many of my school mates parents seemed to be. She never prepared pin-striped pants with plaid shirts or solid royal blue jump suits, and I thank her for that. There was the odd pair of suspenders but to the best of my recollection that was all my doing, in fact I think it was she who tried to talk me out of wearing them a few times.

Smart black pants, little cardigan sweaters and acid washed jeans were a staple of my wardrobe for a good part of the 80�s. And turtlenecks, lots and lots of turtlenecks. I never understood the whole turtleneck thing but then again you never have to justify your attire when you're five and your mom dresses you.

A few select lines from a short film by Shawn Morrison whose weblog hosts two other shorts "Glass" and "Fork". His about page in the form of a mock interview with Burt Reynolds is also worth the read.

We rented this film shortly after Masako and I started to date back in Canada. It had been out of the theaters for more than a year and honestly didn't make a huge impression on me at the time. I was renting roughly ten movies a week for 49 cents from a shop called Video Update and wanted to introduce Masako to some Canadian cinema. Lately, almost subconsciously, I've been choosing films with some kind of daughter story and as Masako can attest since Frankie's birth I've become quite the blubbering idiot when watching these. Shopping for dvd's for Frankie I grabbed this one for myself.

The Sweet Hereafter is the story of a lawyer, played by Ian Holm, who travels to a small grief stricken town in the aftermath of a deadly school bus accident in hopes of securing the families in a class action lawsuit. A somewhat jumbled timeline explores lives before and after the accident and one of the sole survivors played by Sarah Polley, whose own father-daughter relationship leaves me scratching my head.

Ian Holm's character Mitchell would seem like any other "ambulance chaser" if it wasn't for his own tragic relationship with his drug addict daughter when he recalls a story from her childhood when he came close to having to preform an emergency tracheotomy. His three year old daughter innocently staring up at him as the camera pans to show the knife in his hand ready to cut into her throat if she should stop breathing. It's an incredibly powerful scene, watching a parent confronted with the ultimate nightmare and ultimate responsibility.

You can really get away with some insulting statements as long as you end them with a cute little ASCII smiley face. Isn't that right ---you bunch of fucking idiots :-P

The above images are the product of yesterday's late night kitchen developing session. This was the first time to get my hands wet with chemicals and despite the fact that I forgot to get a thermometer, bent the film badly on the reel and was pretty drunk, I think they came out nicely. I tried to stick with the Ilford product line (HP5 Plus 400 ASA, LC29 Developer and HYPAM Fixer) but had to bow to the fuji gods and buy their driwel wetting agent.

I sent my FM3A to Nikon to have the film advance and multiple-exposure lever fixed and luckily for me Nikon Japan doesn't know what a grey market warranty is. Now I only have my lomo, yashica, canon and sony digital camera to shoot with.

I'll be showing a small exhibit of photographs at the next sundown session in Shimokitazaka Sept. 19. If you're in the area drop by and check out the musical acts performing. I'll make a separate post on this later on.

For the past few months I've been using a new film scanner, the Nikon CoolScan V ED and the improvements have been phenomenal. The b/w scans I get and the upgrade to digital ice was well worth the price. Now I just have to sell the Minolta Dual Scan III.

The Chili Peppers guitarist is planning six full length album releases in the next six months, two of which are already out. The Will To Death (amazon) and the second album Automatic Writing (amazon) a project with Fugazi's Joe Lally.

To top it off there are three free unreleased albums available for download from his website. The "From The Sounds Inside" album is in mp3 but both the 8 track demos from Shadows and the acoustic versions are in wmv, but while my bandwidth lasts here's the AV converted to mp3. Thanks Jeff.

A brief history in [COLORS 62: Drugs] on "the world’s most popular, socially sanctioned psychoactive drug." Keep reading to learn how to put a friend in the hospital with shakes and a heart rate of 140 beats per minute with only one cup of Brazilian-Neapolitan-blend coffee.

Seems I've been living the double life without knowing it. I am Mark's smirking revenge. Either that or my evil twin Skippy has emerged yet again ---but on the internet this time, in the form of a blogger. *screenshot (36K png)

Update: Another one. I am Mark's complete lack of surprise.
*screenshot (100K jpg)

On Saturday I attended a b/w developing workshop at Jim O'Connell's put together by the Japan Photographer mailing list. James ran us through the basic makeup of film, the equipment, a bunch of stuff on silver halides and the benefits of alcohol consumption before, after and during the entire process.

More on the afternoon workshop from Jim , Kristen and Kurt. A few of my photos are here.